The Rev. Dr. Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, Minister for Worship and Formation in the Memorial Church; Ellen Gurney Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies; Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies. Photo by Jeffrey Blackwell/Memorial Church Communications.
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By the Rev. Dr. Emmanuel K. Akyeampong,
Minister for Worship and Formation in the Memorial Church
Ellen Gurney Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies
Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies
(The following is a transcript from the service audio)
It is good to see you in the sanctuary this morning after yesterday's blizzard. Please join me in prayer. Lord, I thank you for this opportunity to share your word. I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts will be acceptable to your Lord, our God and Redeemer. Amen.
Naming is an important ritual among the Akan of Ghana. A child's name is chosen carefully to imitate an illustrious ancestor after who the child might be named. The circumstances of her birth are the calling to be in the future envisioned for the child. This is not very different from the traditions in the Old Testament where names reflect the circumstances of birth or envision a future. We have instances of individuals whose names were changed to reflect a new future. Abram and Sarai's names were changed to Abraham and Sarah. Abraham, meaning father of many nations or father of a multitude, and Sarah meaning princess. Jacob was named after the circumstances of his birth with his twin brother, Esau. Esau came out first, with Jacob coming out almost immediately holding Esau's heel. So Jacob means supplanter or deceitful, literally one who takes the heel. And Jacob lived up to his name, deceiving and supplanting his brother Esau by usurping his birthright. When God chartered a different path for Jacob, one which would make him the patriarch of a nation, he changed his name from Jacob to Israel, meaning prince with God.
I was born in Kumasi in February, 1962. My parents gave me two Jewish names, Emmanuel meaning God with us and Amishadai meaning people or nation of God. Emmanuel is quite a common name in Ghana. Amishadai is something else. And outside of the Hebrew Bible, I'm yet to meet someone called Amishadai. Why did my parents give me these two Jewish names? I was told from my childhood that there was a calling on my life and my path would lead to a university professorship and ministry. Growing up, my mother often reminded me of the import of my names. Interestingly in our early teens, my friends nicknamed me Lecturer for my capacity to clearly explain things. I wrestled with this reality, that there was a calling on my life. I disliked the name Amishadai and refused to use it. Who names an Asanti boy Amishadai? Fortunately, the name was not on my birth certificate or baptismal record, so I quietly put it aside. I assumed a lifestyle that was quite the opposite of someone intended for ministry. I did not mind the lecturer or professor part.
The Old Testament has several examples of individuals who protested or resisted the calling on their lives. When God called Moses out of the burning bush, Moses was keen to emphasize that he was not eloquent and had a heavy tongue or stuttered. Isaiah will point out to God that he was a man of unclean lips, even though he had volunteered when the Lord asked, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" In response to Isaiah's feeling of inadequacy, Aseraphim picked a life call from the altar with a tongue, flew to Isaiah and touched his lip with the coal, purifying Isaiah. Ezekiel was intimate dated by God's call that he should be his prophet to a rebellious house. God commanded Ezekiel to eat the scroll that was given to him, in a sense internalizing and embodying the word of God.
It is thus not surprising from our reading from Jeremiah today that Jeremiah would protest his call to be God's prophet. Only a youth about the age of 18 years when he was called, he pointed out his youthfulness to the Lord. "Ah, Lord God. Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy." The Lord encouraged Jeremiah not to be afraid. And in an intimate gesture of empowerment, touched Jeremiah's mouth with his hand and said, "Now I have put my words in your mouth." Jeremiah's charge was heavy. The Lord appointed him over nations and over kingdoms to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.
A call comes with a charge. For Moses, it was to lead the Israelites out of Egypt to the promised land. For Jeremiah, it was to overthrow and to plant nations, a charge well beyond the remit of Israel and Judah. This would earn Jeremiah the resentment of his own people, especially when he pronounced that God had chosen Babylon as his instrument and that Babylon would annex Judah and lead the Israelites lives into captivity. Through Jeremiah, the Lord also pronounced his judgments against Egypt, Syria, Aman, Edom, and Babylon itself.
In read in our reading from Luke, Jesus being both God and human, announced his own call. In Luke four, which saw Jesus return to Galilee from his temptation in the wilderness triumphant and filled with the power of the spirit. He went to the synagogue in his hometown, Nazareth, on the Sabbath. With a distruction of the Jerusalem temple by Babylon, synagogues had taken the institutional place of the temple in the exile and post exile period. A synagogue could be instituted wherever there were 10 male adults who wished to do so. The synagogue became a place of assembly for worship, a school, and a community center.
First at the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus was among relatives and friends, his own people. So how did things turn so badly that his own kin and king sought to kill him by throwing him off a cliff? Luke's version of events is not easy to follow, for the intent of the people is often express by Jesus rather than stated by the people themselves. It is not clear whether the scripture from Isaiah 61 verses one to two that Jesus read in the synagogue was the scripture assigned for the day or chosen by Jesus. Isaiah 61 is a seventh song detailing the role of the Messiah or Christ. After reading the scripture, Jesus boldly informed the audience in the synagogue that, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
In short, the age of God's reign had come. Jubilee had begun. He, Jesus, was the Messiah. Some in the audience were impressed by his eloquence. Others were offended by his claim. "Is this not the son of Joseph?" they asked. In response, Jesus quoted them two Proverbs, "Physician or doctor heal yourself. And no profit is acceptable in his own country." By citing the historical examples of Elijah being sent to Sarapheth to a widow in Sidon, during a famine in Israel, and Elijah's healing of Naaman the Syrian, Jesus underscored that his ministry was not just to the Jews. That attack on the Jewish sense of electedness and the comparison of the Nazarenes to the idolatrous age of Ahab, the context of Elijah's ministry and to Syria, Israel's perennial enemy, tipped the crowd towards violence. They sought to throw Jesus off the cliff. In this, they foreshadowed opposition to Jesus' ministry by his own people and his eventual crucifixion.
A calling is not limited to ordained ministry. It is to use a God given gift to the benefit of many and to the glory of God. It could be a call to good deeds, to be a musician, to teach, to regularly hold people in intercessory prayer. What is common to all these is the calling to be used by God for the edification or the blessing of many.
What makes a calling intimidating is its scope and scale. A calling is never about yourself, it is a call to serve others. This can be challenging in our very individualistic societies. But every Christian has a calling on his or her life. This is what the reformers rediscovered in the reformation in the universal priesthood of all believers. For the reformers as the theologian Jürgen Moltmann points out in his Theology of Hope, "This call in our earth life takes concrete shape in calling as Christians to fan out into the world in the performance of services, commissions and charismata toward the earth and human society."
It took a long time for me to accept the call of ministry on my life. In the year 2000, the Lord made his call clear to me. It is interesting that around this time, several pastors became my friends and they often acted on the assumption that I would become a pastor. The Lord has his way of confirming his call, just like my teenage peers saw the lecturer in me. But along the way, something happened that made me conclude that I was not worthy of the call of ministry. I went through marital estrangement and divorce in my mid forties. In the Pentecostal circles in which I circulated in Ghana, the United Kingdom and the United States, divorce was anathema. I felt far from God. During this period, I even declined to teach in churches, something I enjoyed doing.
One Sunday in Accra, Ghana, I visited a church pastored by a friend of mine who was away in London. They had a guest preacher who was very late. The congregation was restless. I felt a hand on my shoulder as I sat in quiet prayer. A church elder whispered, "Prof, you will have to preach for us today." My emotions were in turmoil, but the Lord used this occasion to confirm his call. I heard clearly from the Lord, "You will preach not because you are righteous. You preach because of my grace." I went to the pulpit. As I asked the congregation to pray with me, the guest preacher walked in. I did not have to preach that day, but I received the Lord's affirmation of his call on my life.
I called my mother in 2011 to tell her I was going to seminary. Her response was simple, "It's about time." I was 49 years. My mother passed away before I was ordained. I have often wondered whether she doubted if the ministerial call on my life would be fulfilled. I wished I had the opportunity to ask her how she felt in those years that I wandered far away from church and ministry. But I have a feeling my mother never doubted I would become a minister. I recall during one visit to Kumasi, she reminded me with a smile how I write a string of degrees after my name. She foretold this when I was a kid. For her, the professorship was a step towards ministry.
It is never too late to respond to the call on your life. The sense of completion I felt when I was ordained in January 2017 was remarkable. It was the piece in my life that had been missing. May the Lord encourage you in the call on your life. May the Lord bring people into your life to affirm his call. And may the Lord equip you for your calling to make you a blessing to many. Amen.